Top Boston doctors discuss some controversial research at Boston University, the new BQ.1.1 strain and whether there will be a winter surge during NBC10 Boston’s weekly series, “COVID Q&A.”
The COVID-19 risk is rising across New England as national data appears to show the virus is digging in ahead of winter.
This week's Massachusetts coronavirus case numbers actually saw a slight decrease from the previous week, and wastewater data is not showing any increase at this time. But the COVID risk levels assessed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have seen an uptick across the region in recent weeks.
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All of Massachusetts was in the CDC's low risk category just a month and a half ago, but the entire state is now considered medium risk.
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All of Rhode Island remains low risk, but all of Connecticut other than New London County is medium risk.
In New Hampshire, Belknap and Carroll counties are high risk, as is Bennington County in Vermont. Maine's Piscataquis County is also in the high risk category.
XBB, BQ.1 and BQ.1.1: New COVID Variants of Concern
Two new variants have also begun showing up in New England, and another so-called nightmare variant that could be even more worrisome is expected to be here soon, if it isn't already.
According to the CDC, BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, two new subvariants that have quietly emerged on the scene in recent weeks, each account for 5.7% of U.S. COVID cases, about 11.4% of the total. They barely registered on the CDC dashboard to start the month.
XBB, the new so-called "nightmare" COVID-19 variant, is spreading rapidly in parts of the world and has already made its way to the U.S., researchers say.
According to Fortune, XBB was first detected in the U.S. on Sept. 15. It is not yet widespread, as only 16 cases have been reported here, mostly in New York.
The CDC's latest update on the prevalence of COVID variants shows no signs of XBB yet in New England, as BA.5, BA.4.6 and the new BQ.1.1 and BQ.1 variants continue to dominate. But throughout the pandemic, COVID numbers in New York have often provided an early look at what Massachusetts and the other southern New England states have in store.
Will Massachusetts See a Winter Surge?
While doctors interviewed by NBC10 Boston this week said they expect some level of a winter surge, they said there isn't any data yet to suggest that the new variants will cause more severe disease.
"Only time will tell," Dr. Sabrina Assoumou of Boston Medical Center said. "My big message is, unfortunately, we're seeing more variants, and the virus is actually figuring out better ways to evade our protection, but we're not hopeless and it's not a helpless situation. We have vaccines, they actually work, but the key thing is that you have to be up to date... So please get get up to date so that we are all prepared in the community before a potential winter surge."
"I think it's likely that we'll continue to see the proportion of cases that are being caused by the new variants increase because they do seem to be able to evade immunity," added Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes of Brigham and Women's Hospital. "But for the general public. I think the issue is going to be that, first of all, receiving a booster vaccine, as Dr. Assoumou said, will strengthen immunity because even if this variant can get around the antibodies and may get people infected and give them a cold, they're not going to have anything much worse than an upper respiratory infection if they've been recently boosted because there does seem to be much broader cross protection across all of these variants for severe disease and that's a really important point.
